again you completely misunderstand what I'm saying.
An increase in economic freedoms will be followed by an increased demand for political freedoms. A wealthy country only comes from open markets which require such freedoms.
We'll see it soon in China, where the communist party is still trying to suppress as many political dissidents as possible, all the while making movements to increase it's economy.
China will change soon. It is the only current exception to the premise the economic wealth is derived from economic freedoms, which inevitably spawn demands for political freedoms.
I suppose what I'm saying is that a free country isn't hostile without reason.
"Advanced State" is measured in any number of ways...read Thomas L. Friedman's "lexus and the olive tree" for what is lacking in many devloping countries.
The advanced state of economic activity that would require N. Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. to go to nuclear energy to save the environment would not occur under the current regimes.
Once the governments of Syria, Iran, & Saudi Arabia fall (in that order) from the influence of soon-to-be semi-self sufficient Iraq, we will have less to worry about.
Everything you say is right, save for the Cato comments. [note: they don't agree with my statements about Iraq- like many they see it as a pipe dream, "it" being democracy in the middle east. Hard: yes. Unachievable: no. Benefit: unimaginably good]
Folks at Cato are libertarians, not conservatives.
Waco is a perfect example of what happens when the government tried to stop certain people from exercising their 1st & 2nd amendment rights. From the articles I have read, they always seek a plausible way to go forward to a better government.
Perhaps the best example is the "6.2% solution" to insolvent Social Security. They are just facing a world with real problems with achievable solutions. It is only self-righteous to deny the truth of our current governmental failings in the hope that our divergence with Jefferson's intentions will go unnoticed.
you're the 4th person that hasn't read my post, or replied to people under me.
I never said government shouldn't act in all cases. I said that people have the time to think about such matters only because of their wealth, which is derived from free markets. To prove the point, most 3rd world nations are ignoring environmental regulations, and they are right to. It is better to effectively feed and educate your population than worry about the spotted owl. If you disagree, you are anti-human, unless you think some mysterious "third way" exisits...some bullshit sustainable development.
There is another word for sustainable development: nuclear energy.
Anyway, read posts before you badger others.
btw, a better term than market failure is "neighborhood effect". you should read Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" and "Free to Choose".
In the latter, you will also see a description of the oft ignored "governmental failure", where the costs of governmental action outweigh the benefits of governmental inaction.
True, I tend not to read much of what the Cato Institute has to say.
Then how do you know what you are missing? Lacking information is key.
Indeed it is exactly what you are describing with the environment, and it would be hard to disagree that we don't really know what we are doing.
That said, the debate is not on a serious level, with manipulative movies and PR motivated lets-help-the-mother-earth events. I don't see real science in the world debate.
In addition, in the political spectrum, we know two things, both of which the enviros have taken opposing views to:
1) stern environmental regulation of a developing nation will greatly hinder economic progress, which is basically the only indicator as to whether or not that nation will stay in the 3rd world.
2) The worst polluters are China and India, and no one is paying attention. They are sufficiently developed to be required to follow the same standards we do. China produces more C02 from coal than we do, but we produce 10X as much energy as they do. The reason? money. The methods adopted in America (in large part because of governmental regulation) worked. They haven't even begun there.
I'm not sure how to proceed.
Something has already come along which will solve our energy problems. It's called nuclear energy, the anathema holy grail.
wow... you obviously didn't read my comment carefully, nor the article I linked to. Dumb=ignorant in my book.
It isn't optimism to say that our wealth is created by free markets; it's a fact.
I was commenting on the nature of development: we have the ability to look towards finer and finer details (e.g. %lead in gasoline or open-source usability standards, or the lack there of) because of our wealth.
Finding solutions to problems is an entirely different matter, and perhaps it would make sense for there to be extra-market motivators towards such an end.
But, I've seen reports from 1900 talking about the hopeless nature of population densisty in urban regions. The problem: with so many horses, how do you take care of the shit?!
Clearly there are disruptive events which break all models of doom and gloom in due time.
I suppose in part I'm frustrated because almost all environmental indicators show improvement, and at the same time environazis are somehow claiming things are getting worse. This is ridiculous. Greenhouse gases are the exception, but hockey-stick models of 100 years in the future mean less than nothing.
1) close your eyes 2) extend your hand and point out into space 3) spin around your room for while 4) stop 5) examine what you are pointing at
6)If you are pointing at: a) something made because of (rather than in spite of) government intervention, give yourself a point b) something made in spite of government intervention, give me a point
7) repeat 8) add up the points, and tell me how much better off we are by giving 30%+ of our money to paper-pusher bureaucrats.
note: ARPA-net != internet, i.e. seed research money only counts if it made it all the way to production, e.g. Apollo.
just thought I'd give pause to all those that think they are fighting the pig capitalisms in their green efforts.
If you view environmental concerns as a luxury good, it makes sense that people only addressed such issues after the average person in society accumulated a fair ammount of wealth.
President Bush today commemorated Earth Day in Maine, where he is touting his environmental policy and highlighting his plan to restore wetlands in the United States.
"Earth Day is traditionally a day for the Left -- a celebration of government's ability to deliver the environmental goods and for threats about the parade of horribles that will descend upon us lest we rededicate ourselves to federal regulators and public land managers," writes Jerry Taylor, Cato Institute director of natural resource studies, in "Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism." He argues that businessmen, not bureaucrats, "deserve most of the credit for the environmental gains over the past century."
"Indeed, we wouldn't even have environmentalists in our midst were it not for capitalism," Taylor writes. "Environmental amenities, after all, are luxury goods. America -- like much of the Third World today -- had no environmental movement to speak of until living standards rose sufficiently so that we could turn our attention from simply providing for food, shelter, and a reasonable education to higher 'quality of life' issues. The richer you are, the more likely you are to be an environmentalist. And people wouldn't be rich without capitalism."
And to say that without capitalism there wouldn't be polution to begin with, is to say that it is bad that technology that allows humans to look beyond the brutish nature of the world.
How about blasting a few assumptions from our lazy semi-socialist system:
1) You, not the government, should be responsible to ensure your needs are met.
2) You, not the government, are free to sign or not sign a contract with your employer that will detail compensation.
3) Minimum wages restrict the demand for labor, and creates unemployment.
4) Requirements by the government, such as requiring/not allowing overtime pay, warp the market for labor, and only hurt society.
5) The habit of government to get involved has made most of you convinced that you cannot act on your own, hence the whining BS which always follows such a post. This is about the degradation of our social fabric.
If you think you are not paid enough the solution is quite simple: 1) Change jobs 2) Get an additional job 3) Start your own company
If you can't cut it, go back to your mother's basement.
Passing the buck for reasons of "social equality" will lead to nothing but friction on the progress of society, let alone enters the realm of oppressing liberty, in the rather muddled definition of "social equality".
"...CMU-RI creating the robots today to fight the aliens tomorrow." -RI T-shirt
But seriously, "dangerous and costly" means more than what you get on face value.
Danger should be minimized. Experiments on underground bio-domes should continue here on earth while robots perform experiments on the moon. They will eventually build our bases before we arrive. I'm talking tele-presence here, so intelligent autonomy can take its sweet time getting developed.
Here is an example of what I'm talking about: http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er_er/html/ro bonaut/r obonaut.html
Here is another: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/skywo rker/ and http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/tre stle/
"Costly" is another matter. Hopefully the cost of launch vehicles will go down. This will happen eventually. The cheapest way to go to space is to send robot, and make them do the job on their own. Luckily, rather than getting a microwave and some nice space-age materials, this modern day Space Race will create something far more interesting: intelligent, useful robots.
The applications are everywhere.
So, yes it will cost $10-40B over 20 years. BUT, I can name dozens of different robotics applications which will yield multi-billion dollar profits.
The point: the money is going somewhere, so let's make it go to something we can use on earth!
It almost begs the question if American programmers DESERVE to be outsourced.
I propose more involvement at all levels of industries and government in education. Cheap programmers( aka college interns ) aren't just in India & China.
Like I've said at least a dozen times on this site, people need to add value to compete. Experience does just that...
Business is about risk...people taking chances on potentially good opportunities for great ideas.
The EU has a goal to be the #1 knowledge economy by 2010, passing the US, who is currently #1.
Unfortunately, bureaucrats don't understand either freedom or business, and they want to act in place of legislatures to do what is best for the people. How very nice and paternalistic of them!
Punishing a company for some very reasonable activity will only make Europe an EVEN MORE UNATTRACTIVE place to operate. There is a limit to how much established wealth will keep Europe in the spotlight. Eventually, something new has to come along. Too bad that something new is in China and India.
Also, this fine is twice what it should have been, if you are looking at precedent. Are you telling me that MS is twice as bad as the worst trust in EU history?
My favorite example of the defunct EU comes from their tome of a constitution. There are dozens of examples of how this document does things beyond the role of a constitution. Sure, there are provisions for balancing powers, but extra-governmental action contained in the constitution, like a limit on the hours in a work-week (another big plus for the economy:), do not belong.
I am 100% for economic merging, standard account practices, a common currency, etc. I think countries should unilaterally drop trade barriers and immigration restrictions.
I am 100% against political merging of desperate groups where unelected bureaucrats will determine policy. A government must be limited, or it will grow to tyranny. I GUARANTEE this is where the EU is going unless they reform now. Tyranny is the logical extension of paternalistic government opportunistically expanding its own powers.
The poor subjugated class of game developers! What will they do when they aren't competitive? Learn something new? Do the same thing, only better than the cheaper competition? Work longer hours?
NO! That silly capitalism is for those losers in developing nations.
I'm going to whine about the cruel world and cry out the same exact complaint that has been said by useless workers for quite some time now: "they aren't competing fairly"
"They" in this case can be anyone involved... as if a CEO isn't allowed to make decisions that aren't in the best interest of his company, but will give him an extra buck.
Get a clue: -"outsourcing" as you know it is an insignificant part of our economy. The US is still the world's leading EXPORTER of goods and services.
-companies saving a buck can do two things: do more with their money _or_ lower prices. Both are good.
-like many other industries, the easiest portion of a manufacturing process will be the first to automate/outsource. Maybe game designers will be valued higher now.
-If the previous point is correct, maybe you should start your own company...all you need is the put the pieces together - hire cheap liberal arts grads currently working as waiters to write the stories, animators in South Korea to do their magic, and programmers in Russia to make the back end. Outsource the legal, PR, HR, and financial services and you're good to go. WAIT - you are a company of one, but you can get a product cheaper than anyone else. How is that possible?
There is a word associated with this set-up...it might be "productivity", or "specialization", but I think it nothing but......PROGRESS:)
I think adding a screen + large disk + video & audio playing codecs is real value. The cost is too high, but if the hard drive is over 60 GB, it might be worth it for some people to just have all their data with them all the time.
This, combined with a cell/PDA could make a nice setup: your storage and media hub would be a "hip-top", with detachable satellite devices for audio/phone/screen interfaces.
For those who hate MS, just remember competition is always good, even if the products are worse.:)
1) The method of computation in the brain has nothing to do with the algorithm. Knowing HOW visual processing works doesn't mean knowing WHAT processing is going on which is key for artificial repeatability. By "black box" I meant that we don't know exactly what is going on. It is the basic problem that in training any neural net, you can't reverse engineer it to get an algorithm. And that would be only if we knew how each neuron was connected, and we don't.
2) You're talking about Rod Brooks. I just saw him speak at the Emerging Robotics Technologies and Applications conference. This is a business conference, so it was light on the research. He is a smart guy. BUT, his work has had a great shift.
First, his bugs are really, really stupid. I wouldn't even call them intelligent. They are reactive in the same way a plant is reactive. This doesn't mean they aren't useful...just look at the roomba.
Second, he himself said that if he continued the approach all his life, he MIGHT get a cat. I would argue that the approach is simply not scalable.
This doesn't mean that training isn't useful, but you need to do it correctly. You should take a computer vision course if you want to learn more. Also, talk of crazy robots, is crazy itself. They have bugs, but being mal-adjusted is a gross anthropomorphism. BUT, look here for what happens when you pick apart a neural net, in Stephen Thaler's Creativity Machine: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/788 3405.htm
Simply put, we aren't even close to getting anything like human visual processing.
...how insane does this make the team that entered a motorcycle?
I suppose you weren't watching the live satellite feed when the motorcycle was demonstrated via remote control. It couldn't enter the race, but they just wanted to show it off.
It fell to the ground in literally 1 second.
Why they tried to solve a stabilization problem instead of an autonomy problem is beyond me. As I've said before, they engineered their own failing. This is different than the Red Team, where the basic hard problem of obstacle detection killed them.
You shouldn't discount the value of peripheral vision.
Currently I'm working on a vision system that hopes to tackle the localization & mapping problem in real time, which is basically the system you are describing before the legs/balance portion.
Using a fish-eye lens (like our own), there is a problem of non-constant resolution. The pixels in the edge represent a larger world area than the center. Precise localization of features there is hard, but optical flow helps.
Basically, you see the ground moving under your feet and react to it, though you might not be aware of it.
Regardless of what you thought you were doing, don't make computer vision researchers' problems for granted: unlike our cognitive capabilities that rely of reason and judgment, vision is a black box. We have very little understanding for what humans do to solve this problem.
I personally think that recognition and vision will need to be used to solve the Grand Challenge. This is how humans do it after all.
using FPGAs to do vision is smart. being able to do dense optical flow or segmentation at 100 Hz would certainly be nice...or even SFM.
BUT, this is not new. I've certainly heard it before, and I'm just a 1st year grad student (at RI at CMU - yes I am biased:).
My basic problem with all complaints is that people act like there is an existing correct & moral way to go about the problem, and CMU is just bending the rules with lots of money.
No one has EVER solved this problem, and most people don't even think we know how. So I love the red teams approach:
1) find something that works. 2) improve the process.
Well, there is certainly is misunderstanding of what it takes to do this.
A "negative obstacle", i.e. a hole, 1/2 meter deep could very easily be missed by the map. This would cause most cars to crash, and is very hard for even humans to detect.
This is one example of dozens of things you MUST perceive in real time. To say that the Red Team isn't really autonomous is insane, and you have little appreciation for 1) their action setup, 2) how hard the problem is.
Besides, humans most certainly have some sort of impressive map making capabilities that let you find the bathroom with no lights on. That is no small feat.
Look around redteamracing.org a bit more to learn what they are actually doing before letting your jealousy get in the way of your head. (Also note that the motorcycle is ridiculous. Since when is it easier to keep a two-wheeled machine stable under off-road conditions than a hummer? They have engineered their own failing...
There's no offline preplanning. Wouldn't help in the real world.
Since when is offline planning not part of military strategy? Sending some drone to do a close flyover, and having a human in the loop to correct obvious mistakes, is probably what the Future Combat Systems will look like.
No humans in harms way, but lots of human interaction and planning. To expect a robot to act on human-level with sense & response alone is crazy. Humans barely do it without a map, and we have a 20TFlop computer on our shoulders. Why would we be able to beat biology when our sensors are worse, our computation is slower, and our intuition is non-existent?
The red team will do the best, and I'm glad. Solving a problem first, then reducing it to a more affordable & minimal solution is called progress. Not solving the problem, while taking the high road, is nothing but failure.
Hopefully next year, or the year after, when DARPA offers the next prize, there will be fewer teams all with better funding. Clearly the next step to me is to not provide the way-points, just the final target. Also, multiple robot interaction would be nice, especially if there were a flying bot involved.
Slashdot Mirror
again you completely misunderstand what I'm saying.
An increase in economic freedoms will be followed by an increased demand for political freedoms. A wealthy country only comes from open markets which require such freedoms.
We'll see it soon in China, where the communist party is still trying to suppress as many political dissidents as possible, all the while making movements to increase it's economy.
China will change soon. It is the only current exception to the premise the economic wealth is derived from economic freedoms, which inevitably spawn demands for political freedoms.
I suppose what I'm saying is that a free country isn't hostile without reason.
"Advanced State" is measured in any number of ways...read Thomas L. Friedman's "lexus and the olive tree" for what is lacking in many devloping countries.
The advanced state of economic activity that would require N. Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. to go to nuclear energy to save the environment would not occur under the current regimes.
Once the governments of Syria, Iran, & Saudi Arabia fall (in that order) from the influence of soon-to-be semi-self sufficient Iraq, we will have less to worry about.
Everything you say is right, save for the Cato comments. [note: they don't agree with my statements about Iraq- like many they see it as a pipe dream, "it" being democracy in the middle east. Hard: yes. Unachievable: no. Benefit: unimaginably good]
Folks at Cato are libertarians, not conservatives.
Waco is a perfect example of what happens when the government tried to stop certain people from exercising their 1st & 2nd amendment rights. From the articles I have read, they always seek a plausible way to go forward to a better government.
Perhaps the best example is the "6.2% solution" to insolvent Social Security. They are just facing a world with real problems with achievable solutions. It is only self-righteous to deny the truth of our current governmental failings in the hope that our divergence with Jefferson's intentions will go unnoticed.
you're the 4th person that hasn't read my post, or replied to people under me.
I never said government shouldn't act in all cases. I said that people have the time to think about such matters only because of their wealth, which is derived from free markets. To prove the point, most 3rd world nations are ignoring environmental regulations, and they are right to. It is better to effectively feed and educate your population than worry about the spotted owl. If you disagree, you are anti-human, unless you think some mysterious "third way" exisits...some bullshit sustainable development.
There is another word for sustainable development: nuclear energy.
Anyway, read posts before you badger others.
btw, a better term than market failure is "neighborhood effect". you should read Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" and "Free to Choose".
In the latter, you will also see a description of the oft ignored "governmental failure", where the costs of governmental action outweigh the benefits of governmental inaction.
True, I tend not to read much of what the Cato Institute has to say.
Then how do you know what you are missing? Lacking information is key.
Indeed it is exactly what you are describing with the environment, and it would be hard to disagree that we don't really know what we are doing.
That said, the debate is not on a serious level, with manipulative movies and PR motivated lets-help-the-mother-earth events. I don't see real science in the world debate.
In addition, in the political spectrum, we know two things, both of which the enviros have taken opposing views to:
1) stern environmental regulation of a developing nation will greatly hinder economic progress, which is basically the only indicator as to whether or not that nation will stay in the 3rd world.
2) The worst polluters are China and India, and no one is paying attention. They are sufficiently developed to be required to follow the same standards we do. China produces more C02 from coal than we do, but we produce 10X as much energy as they do. The reason? money. The methods adopted in America (in large part because of governmental regulation) worked. They haven't even begun there.
I'm not sure how to proceed.
Something has already come along which will solve our energy problems. It's called nuclear energy, the anathema holy grail.
wow... you obviously didn't read my comment carefully, nor the article I linked to. Dumb=ignorant in my book.
It isn't optimism to say that our wealth is created by free markets; it's a fact.
I was commenting on the nature of development: we have the ability to look towards finer and finer details (e.g. %lead in gasoline or open-source usability standards, or the lack there of) because of our wealth.
Finding solutions to problems is an entirely different matter, and perhaps it would make sense for there to be extra-market motivators towards such an end.
But, I've seen reports from 1900 talking about the hopeless nature of population densisty in urban regions. The problem: with so many horses, how do you take care of the shit?!
Clearly there are disruptive events which break all models of doom and gloom in due time.
I suppose in part I'm frustrated because almost all environmental indicators show improvement, and at the same time environazis are somehow claiming things are getting worse. This is ridiculous. Greenhouse gases are the exception, but hockey-stick models of 100 years in the future mean less than nothing.
steps to enlightenment:
1) close your eyes
2) extend your hand and point out into space
3) spin around your room for while
4) stop
5) examine what you are pointing at
6)If you are pointing at:
a) something made because of (rather than in spite of) government intervention, give yourself a point
b) something made in spite of government intervention, give me a point
7) repeat
8) add up the points, and tell me how much better off we are by giving 30%+ of our money to paper-pusher bureaucrats.
note: ARPA-net != internet, i.e. seed research money only counts if it made it all the way to production, e.g. Apollo.
If you view environmental concerns as a luxury good, it makes sense that people only addressed such issues after the average person in society accumulated a fair ammount of wealth.
to quote the Cato Institute here:
And to say that without capitalism there wouldn't be polution to begin with, is to say that it is bad that technology that allows humans to look beyond the brutish nature of the world.
Happy Industrial Revolution Day!
http://while-true.blogspot.com/
higher prices will yield more research/supply
sucks for the consumer in the short run...
http://while-true.blogspot.com/
video is basically a 3D file...
(row,column,time)
I would love to see encoding based on that.
Also, this would be useful in computer vision. Most vision algorithms for video are really just image streams.
www.kirigin.com
How about blasting a few assumptions from our lazy semi-socialist system:
1) You, not the government, should be responsible to ensure your needs are met.
2) You, not the government, are free to sign or not sign a contract with your employer that will detail compensation.
3) Minimum wages restrict the demand for labor, and creates unemployment.
4) Requirements by the government, such as requiring/not allowing overtime pay, warp the market for labor, and only hurt society.
5) The habit of government to get involved has made most of you convinced that you cannot act on your own, hence the whining BS which always follows such a post. This is about the degradation of our social fabric.
If you think you are not paid enough the solution is quite simple:
1) Change jobs
2) Get an additional job
3) Start your own company
If you can't cut it, go back to your mother's basement.
Passing the buck for reasons of "social equality" will lead to nothing but friction on the progress of society, let alone enters the realm of oppressing liberty, in the rather muddled definition of "social equality".
____
Robotics; Policy; Society:
http://while-true.blogspot.com/
out of undergrad in CS from NYU I was offered 62K in a NYC job (Bloomberg LP). I thought this was pretty high.
After finishing my masters in robotics from CMU, I hope to be making 75-85K. We'll see, but I expect this to be about right.
Clearly spending 2 years more in school will boost my salary more than experience would have. (maybe)
Want to make more? Learn specialized skills, get a higher degree, or spend more time looking.
www.kirigin.com
clearly a york peppermint patty might make me think twice...
any takers?
The dark adapted eye can detect a single photon. This is the only known direct macro observation in biology of a quantum mechanical event.
"...CMU-RI creating the robots today to fight the aliens tomorrow."
o bonaut/r obonaut.html
o rker/e stle/
-RI T-shirt
But seriously, "dangerous and costly" means more than what you get on face value.
Danger should be minimized. Experiments on underground bio-domes should continue here on earth while robots perform experiments on the moon. They will eventually build our bases before we arrive. I'm talking tele-presence here, so intelligent autonomy can take its sweet time getting developed.
Here is an example of what I'm talking about:
http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er_er/html/r
Here is another:
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/skyw
and
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/projects/tr
"Costly" is another matter. Hopefully the cost of launch vehicles will go down. This will happen eventually. The cheapest way to go to space is to send robot, and make them do the job on their own. Luckily, rather than getting a microwave and some nice space-age materials, this modern day Space Race will create something far more interesting: intelligent, useful robots.
The applications are everywhere.
So, yes it will cost $10-40B over 20 years. BUT, I can name dozens of different robotics applications which will yield multi-billion dollar profits.
The point: the money is going somewhere, so let's make it go to something we can use on earth!
It almost begs the question if American programmers DESERVE to be outsourced.
I propose more involvement at all levels of industries and government in education. Cheap programmers( aka college interns ) aren't just in India & China.
Like I've said at least a dozen times on this site, people need to add value to compete. Experience does just that...
Business is about risk...people taking chances on potentially good opportunities for great ideas.
:), do not belong.
The EU has a goal to be the #1 knowledge economy by 2010, passing the US, who is currently #1.
Unfortunately, bureaucrats don't understand either freedom or business, and they want to act in place of legislatures to do what is best for the people. How very nice and paternalistic of them!
Punishing a company for some very reasonable activity will only make Europe an EVEN MORE UNATTRACTIVE place to operate. There is a limit to how much established wealth will keep Europe in the spotlight. Eventually, something new has to come along. Too bad that something new is in China and India.
Also, this fine is twice what it should have been, if you are looking at precedent. Are you telling me that MS is twice as bad as the worst trust in EU history?
My favorite example of the defunct EU comes from their tome of a constitution. There are dozens of examples of how this document does things beyond the role of a constitution. Sure, there are provisions for balancing powers, but extra-governmental action contained in the constitution, like a limit on the hours in a work-week (another big plus for the economy
I am 100% for economic merging, standard account practices, a common currency, etc. I think countries should unilaterally drop trade barriers and immigration restrictions.
I am 100% against political merging of desperate groups where unelected bureaucrats will determine policy. A government must be limited, or it will grow to tyranny. I GUARANTEE this is where the EU is going unless they reform now. Tyranny is the logical extension of paternalistic government opportunistically expanding its own powers.
You heard it here first! ( maybe )
"bureaucratic fools!"
...PROGRESS :)
The poor subjugated class of game developers! What will they do when they aren't competitive?
Learn something new? Do the same thing, only better than the cheaper competition? Work longer hours?
NO! That silly capitalism is for those losers in developing nations.
I'm going to whine about the cruel world and cry out the same exact complaint that has been said by useless workers for quite some time now: "they aren't competing fairly"
"They" in this case can be anyone involved... as if a CEO isn't allowed to make decisions that aren't in the best interest of his company, but will give him an extra buck.
Get a clue:
-"outsourcing" as you know it is an insignificant part of our economy. The US is still the world's leading EXPORTER of goods and services.
-companies saving a buck can do two things: do more with their money _or_ lower prices. Both are good.
-like many other industries, the easiest portion of a manufacturing process will be the first to automate/outsource. Maybe game designers will be valued higher now.
-If the previous point is correct, maybe you should start your own company...all you need is the put the pieces together - hire cheap liberal arts grads currently working as waiters to write the stories, animators in South Korea to do their magic, and programmers in Russia to make the back end. Outsource the legal, PR, HR, and financial services and you're good to go. WAIT - you are a company of one, but you can get a product cheaper than anyone else. How is that possible?
There is a word associated with this set-up...it might be "productivity", or "specialization", but I think it nothing but...
I think adding a screen + large disk + video & audio playing codecs is real value. The cost is too high, but if the hard drive is over 60 GB, it might be worth it for some people to just have all their data with them all the time.
:)
This, combined with a cell/PDA could make a nice setup: your storage and media hub would be a "hip-top", with detachable satellite devices for audio/phone/screen interfaces.
For those who hate MS, just remember competition is always good, even if the products are worse.
A few things:
8 3405.htm
1) The method of computation in the brain has nothing to do with the algorithm. Knowing HOW visual processing works doesn't mean knowing WHAT processing is going on which is key for artificial repeatability. By "black box" I meant that we don't know exactly what is going on. It is the basic problem that in training any neural net, you can't reverse engineer it to get an algorithm. And that would be only if we knew how each neuron was connected, and we don't.
2) You're talking about Rod Brooks. I just saw him speak at the Emerging Robotics Technologies and Applications conference. This is a business conference, so it was light on the research. He is a smart guy. BUT, his work has had a great shift.
First, his bugs are really, really stupid. I wouldn't even call them intelligent. They are reactive in the same way a plant is reactive. This doesn't mean they aren't useful...just look at the roomba.
Second, he himself said that if he continued the approach all his life, he MIGHT get a cat. I would argue that the approach is simply not scalable.
This doesn't mean that training isn't useful, but you need to do it correctly. You should take a computer vision course if you want to learn more. Also, talk of crazy robots, is crazy itself. They have bugs, but being mal-adjusted is a gross anthropomorphism. BUT, look here for what happens when you pick apart a neural net, in Stephen Thaler's Creativity Machine: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/78
Simply put, we aren't even close to getting anything like human visual processing.
it was called an engine failure when the Red Team hit an obstacle. the cause of a mechanical failure isn't always benign.
...how insane does this make the team that entered a motorcycle?
I suppose you weren't watching the live satellite feed when the motorcycle was demonstrated via remote control. It couldn't enter the race, but they just wanted to show it off.
It fell to the ground in literally 1 second.
Why they tried to solve a stabilization problem instead of an autonomy problem is beyond me. As I've said before, they engineered their own failing. This is different than the Red Team, where the basic hard problem of obstacle detection killed them.
You shouldn't discount the value of peripheral vision.
Currently I'm working on a vision system that hopes to tackle the localization & mapping problem in real time, which is basically the system you are describing before the legs/balance portion.
Using a fish-eye lens (like our own), there is a problem of non-constant resolution. The pixels in the edge represent a larger world area than the center. Precise localization of features there is hard, but optical flow helps.
Basically, you see the ground moving under your feet and react to it, though you might not be aware of it.
Regardless of what you thought you were doing, don't make computer vision researchers' problems for granted: unlike our cognitive capabilities that rely of reason and judgment, vision is a black box. We have very little understanding for what humans do to solve this problem.
I personally think that recognition and vision will need to be used to solve the Grand Challenge. This is how humans do it after all.
using FPGAs to do vision is smart. being able to do dense optical flow or segmentation at 100 Hz would certainly be nice...or even SFM.
:).
BUT, this is not new. I've certainly heard it before, and I'm just a 1st year grad student (at RI at CMU - yes I am biased
My basic problem with all complaints is that people act like there is an existing correct & moral way to go about the problem, and CMU is just bending the rules with lots of money.
No one has EVER solved this problem, and most people don't even think we know how. So I love the red teams approach:
1) find something that works.
2) improve the process.
We'll see tomorrow whether #1 is accomplished.
Well, there is certainly is misunderstanding of what it takes to do this.
A "negative obstacle", i.e. a hole, 1/2 meter deep could very easily be missed by the map. This would cause most cars to crash, and is very hard for even humans to detect.
This is one example of dozens of things you MUST perceive in real time. To say that the Red Team isn't really autonomous is insane, and you have little appreciation for 1) their action setup, 2) how hard the problem is.
Besides, humans most certainly have some sort of impressive map making capabilities that let you find the bathroom with no lights on. That is no small feat.
Look around redteamracing.org a bit more to learn what they are actually doing before letting your jealousy get in the way of your head. (Also note that the motorcycle is ridiculous. Since when is it easier to keep a two-wheeled machine stable under off-road conditions than a hummer? They have engineered their own failing...
There's no offline preplanning. Wouldn't help in the real world.
Since when is offline planning not part of military strategy? Sending some drone to do a close flyover, and having a human in the loop to correct obvious mistakes, is probably what the Future Combat Systems will look like.
No humans in harms way, but lots of human interaction and planning. To expect a robot to act on human-level with sense & response alone is crazy. Humans barely do it without a map, and we have a 20TFlop computer on our shoulders. Why would we be able to beat biology when our sensors are worse, our computation is slower, and our intuition is non-existent?
The red team will do the best, and I'm glad. Solving a problem first, then reducing it to a more affordable & minimal solution is called progress. Not solving the problem, while taking the high road, is nothing but failure.
Hopefully next year, or the year after, when DARPA offers the next prize, there will be fewer teams all with better funding. Clearly the next step to me is to not provide the way-points, just the final target. Also, multiple robot interaction would be nice, especially if there were a flying bot involved.